Chapter One - Surrender in Anqing
Anqing stood tall on the north bank of the Yangtze River, its city walls thick yet weathered, arrow slits still scarred with the marks of fire oil and broken shafts. It was now completely surrounded by Kublai Khan's army.
Inside, the price of rice had risen tenfold. Hunger gnawed at the bellies of the people, corpses of the starved sometimes slumping at the mouth of alleys. The bustle of markets and the cries of children were gone, leaving only the scrape of iron armor and the fading echoes of war horns.
Li Shan stood with spear in hand atop the western gate tower. The cold wind made the steel shaft freeze in his palm. Across the river, the Mongolian army's campfires stretched like constellations over the hills, countless cold eyes gazing down upon this isolated city.
"Shan."
The voice came from behind.
Shangguan Ying'er carried a pouch of medicines, her eyes weary yet bright. She wore a loose-sleeved soldier's coat tied at the waist, her hair bound high, appearing little different from an ordinary orderly—save that the clarity of her features betrayed her gender.
Li Shan turned, lowering his voice. "Ying'er, you should be in the rear camp. The front lines are no place for you."
She raised her hand, passing him a small vial of powder. "Your old wound has opened again. If I don't come, who will dress it?"
Li Shan hesitated, then silently extended his arm. Blood had seeped through at the wrist-guard. With practiced hands, Ying'er undid his armor and applied the powder. Her fingers trembled slightly at first against his skin, then steadied.
"The Yuan army is larger than when they besieged Shouchun last year," she said softly.
Li Shan's gaze darkened. "They have not come merely to surround us. They have come to collect. Commander Fan… has already chosen."
Dusk deepened. In the council hall of Anqing, firelight flickered against worn armor.
Fan Wenhu, still clad in old Song armor, looked weary and grim. A man of the battlefield, famed for valor, he now bore the weight of a collapsing dynasty. Around him, the officers' armor was patched, their faces gaunt.
"The Song is isolated, severed north from south," his voice rasped, yet it was plain and unyielding. "If Anqing continues to hold, it is nothing but waiting for death. I have already sent envoys to the Yuan to discuss surrender."
An uproar followed. A general slammed his fist on the table. "Commander Fan! You are a general of the Song! How can you abandon the temple and the altars of our ancestors?"
Fan Wenhu's face remained still. His hand brushed slowly across the desk. "Ancestral temples? The court in Lin'an clings only to its own survival. Jianghuai's defenses have long been abandoned. If we persist, the price will be a dead city and a field of bones."
Silence pressed down. None spoke further.
At the doorway, Li Shan felt the words strike like a blow. For years he had carried his iron spear with the vow to defend his land, never dreaming he would hear his commander speak of surrender.
He turned slightly and saw Shangguan Ying'er behind him, head bowed, her hand clutching the medicine pouch, lips drained of color.
The night watch drumbeat sounded from the ramparts. Alone at the battlements, Li Shan stood in armor, the river's waves slapping at the stone foundations below.
"Shan."
Ying'er's voice reached him softly.
"You heard?" he asked.
She nodded, her gaze troubled. "Your heart must be full of anger."
His grip tightened on the spear, voice hoarse. "I took up arms to defend our rivers and mountains. Now they ask me to change banners… How could there be no hatred?"
For a long while she was silent, then whispered, "If we hold, we die. If we yield, we live. Commander Fan is no coward—he only seeks to keep us alive."
Li Shan turned to her. In the glow of torches, her face shone with quiet resolve, and his throat tightened.
"If we bend to the Yuan," he asked lowly, "will you still walk with me?"
She started, then nodded gently. "Wherever you go, I will follow."
A spark flickered in his chest, like fire in the dark.
Dawn broke through the river mist. Horns blared. The gates of Anqing creaked open.
Fan Wenhu, armor fastened, led his troops out in somber ranks. Behind him, ten thousand battered soldiers marched, their armor mottled, their expressions torn.
Li Shan and Shangguan Ying'er moved among them. The gates lowered with a final groan. For the last time, the flag of the Song fluttered in the wind—then was torn down, falling into the dust.
Across the river, the Yuan banners rose: black cloth, white script, the name of Genghis Khan snapping in the wind. Their cavalry thundered forward like a tide, hooves shaking the very stones of the walls.
Li Shan's chest trembled. He knew then: they were no longer soldiers of the Song.
Ying'er whispered near his ear: "Brother Li, the heavens are changing."
Staring at the river's rush, sweeping away broken banners and stains of blood, he answered in a low voice, "Yes. From this day on… we are but the Yuan's blade and shield."
Yet deep within, a shadow lingered—a torn loyalty, a sundered self. He did not know where this path would lead them.
But he knew she was beside him, and with that, he still had strength to walk on.
Chapter Two - Kublai Khan's ambitions
The steppe winds still whispered of conquest, but Kublai's eyes had long turned east, across the sea.
Japan—Wa, as the Chinese called it—had once sent tribute to the Tang court. But under Kublai's reign, its shogunate in Kamakura had grown proud, answering none of his letters. Three times he sent envoys bearing imperial seals, words written with the full weight of the Great Khan:
Submit, or be counted among the enemies of the Mongol Empire.
The messengers returned with insult—or did not return at all. Some were dismissed, others murdered, their heads sent back as warning.
To Kublai, it was more than defiance. It was humiliation. The blood of slain envoys cried out for vengeance.
One evening in Khanbaliq, the capital he had raised in Chinese stone, the court gathered beneath lanterns that swayed in the still air. Officials stood in half-circles—Chinese scholars in silk, Uighur scribes with scrolls, Mongol generals in leather and steel.
"They call themselves the 'land of the gods,'" said a courtier, bitterness sharpening his tone. "They believe your empire cannot reach across water."
Kublai's heavy hand struck the arm of his throne. The sound cracked through the hall.
"Across mountains, across deserts, across forests—have we not ridden?" His voice thundered. "Shall the sea stop us? No. Japan will learn. To slay my envoys is to spit upon the name of Chinggis himself."
The chamber fell silent. Even the cautious Chinese ministers lowered their eyes. None dared question him.
Yet Kublai knew Japan's warriors. Reports told of men who fought alone, calling their names before charging into combat, as if war were a series of duels. Admirable in spirit—but foolish against Mongol discipline.
He pictured them breaking before the clash of kettle drums, the storm of arrows, the advance of armored cavalry.
They believe themselves beyond reach. They will learn otherwise.
And so, in the autumn of 1274, the harbors of Goryeo filled with war. Ships groaned under the weight of horses and men. Soldiers sharpened their arrows, voices rising in chants that carried over the sea wind. Drums rolled like thunder. Banners of blue and gold snapped in the salt air.
From his command pavilion, Kublai gazed east into the mist, toward an island that had mocked him. The sea itself seemed to shift uneasily under the weight of what was coming.
"They think themselves untouchable," he said, his voice low but steady. "Soon, the waves will carry my judgment to their shores."
Chapter Three - First expedition
The sea smelled of iron and storm.
From the deck of a Korean-built warship, Li Shan gripped the railing until his knuckles turned white. All around, the Yuan fleet stretched to the horizon—thousands of ships, their sails like the wings of a migrating flock. Drums thudded across the waves, beating time for oars and hearts alike.
It was autumn of 1274. Kublai Khan's command had carried them eastward from Goryeo, toward the land the Chinese called Wa.
Li Shan's armor clung damp to his shoulders. Though he had marched through Anqing's siege and seen rivers turned red in Yangtze River, never before had he fought upon the sea. Every pitch of the ship made his stomach twist. Around him, men muttered prayers to every god they could name—Mongols invoking Eternal Blue Sky, Koreans murmuring to mountain spirits, Chinese soldiers reciting fragments of the Diamond Sutra.
He thought of Ying'er then. Her voice, her soft hands binding his wounds. Before he boarded at Goryeo, she had pressed a packet of herbs into his palm. "Shan, carry this, and return alive." The words clung to him more than the smell of salt or sweat.
A cry rose from the mast: "Land!" It was Iki Island.
The decks shuddered with sudden motion. Men scrambled to peer eastward. Through the mist rose dark ridges, Japan's shore, its forests crowding down to the beaches. And there—like ants at the tide line—waited warriors in lacquered armor, their banners stiff against the sea wind.
In the pale light of dawn, the Yuan fleet crept slowly toward the shores of Iki Island. Salt mist still veiled the sea, drifting in tattered shrouds across the swells. The ships rocked heavily with each rolling wave, and the horses, disoriented by days at sea, stumbled nervously across the slick decks.
Li Shan bent low to calm his mount, running a hand along its trembling neck. The muffled clatter of hooves on wet planks mingled with the whistle of the sea wind, sharpening every nerve.
The shoreline ahead was dense with pines and tangled brush. Wind swept through the needles and leaves, hissing like a thousand arrows. Beyond the treeline, Li Shan caught sight of the enemy: Japanese warriors already waiting, clad in lacquered black armor, blades at their hips, expressionless eyes gleaming like steel beneath their fearsome masks.
Warhorses shrieked and pawed the ground, soldiers gripped reins tighter, all straining for the signal to charge.
At the prow of his ship, Kim Bang-gyeong stood stern and unyielding, eyes fixed on the shifting coastline. His voice carried above the crash of waves as he ordered formations into line. Archers checked their bowstrings, cavalry tightened straps and readied for the landing.
The coastline was treacherous—gravel mingled with jagged rock, the surf striking the stone with hollow thunder. Goryeo foot soldiers slogged through wet sand, their blades and shields dripping seawater, heavy as lead.
With a shout, Li Shan spurred his horse forward. His cavalry thundered across the beach, hooves flinging sand and gravel skyward. War cries split the air, a roar that rose like a breaking tide.
From the rocky high ground, Japanese samurai answered. Their long swords gleamed, bows bent back, and volleys of arrows rained down in black sheets. Horses screamed in terror, some rearing as shafts struck. Li Shan leaned low, whispering to his steed even as he hacked through the thicket of spears and men barring his way.
The battle spread quickly from the open shore into the treeline. Steel clashed with steel, arrows sang past, and the salt-heavy wind carried the stench of blood. Kim Bang-gyeong stood atop a ridge, rallying formations with sweeping gestures. The tide of war shifted from heartbeat to heartbeat.
The morning sun broke across the island, casting a cold brilliance over wet sand and tossing pines. Hooves stamped deep into the sodden ground, banners whipped in the sea wind, and men fought on the shifting boundary between tide and forest.
On Iki Island, war was only beginning—cruel and unpredictable. Yet deep within, Li Shan felt Shangguan Ying'er close to him, her soft whispers reaching him across the ocean, bringing quiet solace.
Chapter Four - Hakata Bay
Six days later, the Mongol drums roared again, this time echoing over Hakata Bay. Arrows hissed from shipboard crossbows, blackening the air. The Japanese answered with long shafts arcing high, some finding gaps in armor, others falling harmlessly into the surf. Li Shan's teeth clenched. This was no duel of champions as rumor claimed—this was thunder meeting wood and flesh.
The Yuan vanguard leapt ashore first, shields locking, spears thrusting in unison. Japanese swordsmen charged, shouting their names as challenge, only to be cut down by the rhythm of a wall advancing step by step. Li Shan plunged forward with them, spear leveled, feet sinking into wet sand.
A warrior in horned helm came at him, blade flashing. Li Shan twisted, deflected with the spear's haft, then drove the steel point into the man's chest. The enemy fell without a sound. The clash rolled on.
The battlefield was unlike any he had known. Drums and gongs shattered the rhythm of individual combat, drowning out single cries with the roar of many. Japanese fighters broke ranks to duel, only to be engulfed by volleys of arrows and advancing shields. Yet their courage was undeniable; even when pierced, they dragged down Yuan soldiers with dying strength.
By nightfall, smoke curled over Hakata Bay. The Yuan had seized the beachhead, but the shore was strewn with corpses, Mongol and Japanese alike. Horses whinnied in panic at the unfamiliar sea, their hooves sinking deep into sand.
That night, the wind changed. Clouds thickened. The sea grew restless. Li Shan lay awake on damp earth, staring into the storm-lit sky.
Ying'er… if only you could see this. Would you think us conquerors, or only wanderers lost across the waves?
The storm had struck like a hammer in the night, tearing through the darkness with a fury no man could master. War-junks were ripped from their anchors, sails shredded to ribbons, masts snapped like twigs. Hulls collided in the chaos, splintering to kindling, vanishing beneath black water.
Now the gray morning revealed only ruin.
The sea was choked with wreckage: broken spars bobbing like bones, shredded sailcloth spread across the surf like a funeral shroud, barrels of rice split and bleeding into the waves. Helmets and shields floated in the froth, indistinguishable from the bodies they accompanied. The cries of gulls circled above, shrill and merciless.
Men clung to driftwood, their voices weak and desperate, but most were silent—already dragged under, swallowed by the dark. Horses that had been lashed to the lower decks were gone, their carcasses drifting belly-up, iron tack dragging them into the deep.
Li Shan stood at the bow of his battered vessel, rain-slick armor streaked with salt. His ship had survived, though scarcely. He had ordered the mainmast cut down during the gale, a desperate gamble that saved them from capsizing. The deck still groaned under the strain of split timbers, and half his men bore wounds from falling rigging and flying debris.
A soldier staggered before him, eyes hollow, lips cracked with salt."General… the second division is gone. At least thirty ships. Maybe more."
Li Shan gave no reply. His gaze swept the horizon, searching. Where the mighty armada had once stretched like a forest of banners and masts, only scattered survivors now remained, a handful of smoke-scarred hulks limping in the swell. The great flagship was nowhere to be seen.
Another man was dragged aboard by sailors, coughing seawater from his lungs. His first words rasped out between spasms:"Hundreds drowned… supplies lost… the storm took them all."
The truth lay plain on the waves. The surface was a graveyard, the bodies of soldiers bumping gently against hulls, mouths frozen open, eyes staring at nothing. Some still clutched weapons, as if ready to fight the sea itself. Others drifted with arms wide, as though in surrender.
Li Shan's men muttered prayers, some kneeling to touch their foreheads to the soaked planks. A few wept openly. The strongest stared into the waves with hollow eyes, as though awaiting their own turn.
At last Li Shan spoke, his voice cold and iron-bound, cutting through the despair:"Enough. Heaven has tested us, but the living still carry the Khan's will. Those who drowned are martyrs. We will not waste their sacrifice with weakness. Grip your blades. Bind your wounds. The sea has not ended us, and neither will the enemy."
The words steadied them, if only a little. The sailors moved to patch rigging, officers barked orders, and the ship staggered forward once more.
By midday, a few other vessels limped into sight, answering ragged signal flags. The fleet, once a serpent of hundreds of ships stretching from horizon to horizon, was now reduced to scattered fragments, smoke rising where wrecks still burned.
Li Shan watched it all in silence. His hands were steady, his eyes sharp, but within him a bitter thought gnawed: thousands of men, lost before they had ever set foot on land.
The generals ordered withdrawal. The sea was no battlefield they could master.
As the ships lurched back toward Goryeo, Li Shan stood at the stern, salt spray stinging his face. They had not been defeated by men, but by the sea itself.
Behind him, Japan's forests receded into mist. Ahead, the long voyage back to Khanbaliq awaited.
And within him, a quiet unease: had the heavens themselves refused the Khan's command?
Chapter Five - Preparation for second expedition
The sea had beaten them once. But Kublai Khan was not a man to accept defeat from wind and wave.
After the retreat of 1274, the court in Khanbaliq filled with whispers of failure. Ministers urged caution, envoys from Goryeo begged restraint. King Chungnyeol of Goryeo sent delegation after delegation, pleading that his kingdom, drained of men and grain, could not bear the burden of another great expedition.
But Kublai's pride had been cut deeper than any wound on the battlefield. The deaths of his envoys in Japan—among them Du Shizhong, seized and executed by the Kamakura shogunate—burned like fire in his memory. To slay an imperial envoy was not mere insult. It was an affront to Heaven's order.
"Twice," Kublai thundered in court, "they have slain my messengers. Twice they have spat upon the empire. This blood must be answered."
The Mongol generals nodded fiercely. Yet the Chinese ministers glanced uneasily at one another. They knew the cost. The first expedition had drained coffers, drowned ships, and left thousands dead without gain. Still, no voice could soften the Khan's resolve.
Preparations began anew. This time, the scale would dwarf the first.
In the spring of 1281, drums thundered again across Asia's coasts.
From the harbors of Goryeo, the Eastern Route Army gathered. Under the command of Xin Du and Hong Chaqiu, nineteen thousand Mongol, Khitan, and Jurchen soldiers boarded nine hundred ships. With them sailed ten thousand Koreans under Kim Bang-gyeong, and seventeen thousand sailors to man the fleet. Their holds brimmed with grain—ten myriads of stone, enough to feed the army through long campaigns.
South across the sea, the harbors of Zhejiang groaned under an even greater weight. From Ningbo and Qingyuan, three thousand five hundred ships launched, carrying one hundred thousand men. These were the Jiangnan Army—southern Song soldiers who had bent the knee after their dynasty fell in 1279. Among them marched Fan Wenhu, once the commander of Anqing, now a general under Yuan banners. Alongside him rode Li Shan and the other former Song troops, now branded manjun—the "southern army," bound by loyalty no longer to a fallen dynasty, but to the empire that had conquered it.
Li Shan remembered the day Lin'an fell. The last boy-emperor carried away, the dynasty extinguished in fire and surrender. He had stood on the banks of the Qiantang River, spear in hand, and felt the silence of an ending. Now, barely two years later, he found himself once more boarding ships, not for defense of his homeland, but for conquest across the sea.
On the docks of Ningbo, the soldiers packed tight upon the warships, their banners fluttering with the black-and-white characters of the Yuan. Li Shan walked the deck, his armor clinking with each step. Shangguan Ying'er followed close, her medicine pouch slung at her waist, her eyes scanning the sea with unease.
"Shan," she whispered as the sails unfurled, "the heavens crushed us once already. Do you think the sea will bow to us this time?"
Li Shan looked at the vast fleet stretching beyond sight, sails blotting out the horizon. Thousands of men, thousands of horses, the greatest armada the world had yet seen. He forced his voice steady.
"With numbers like these, the sea itself may tremble."
But in his chest, doubt lingered. He had seen how quickly storms could scatter ships, how easily men drowned when wood splintered under crushing waves. Armies were built for land. On the water, Heaven decides.
By command, the two armies would converge in June—Eastern Route from Goryeo, Southern Army from China's coast—striking Japan like twin thunderbolts. The Mongol generals spoke of a swift conquest: to land, to break the samurai ranks, and then to settle. The Jiangnan soldiers, weary of endless war, murmured of a different hope—that once Japan's shores were secured, they would be ordered to till the soil, to plant rice, and to carve a life no longer bound to marching drums.
Yet as the fleet rolled eastward, the winds already began to shift.
And far across the water, the samurai of Kamakura sharpened their blades, building walls of stone along Hakata Bay, waiting for the storm they knew must come.
Chapter Six - Second voyage
The drums of departure rolled like thunder across the harbor of Qingyuan. Morning mist clung to the masts, and the cries of sailors blended with the whinnies of frightened horses being led up the narrow gangways. The vast Song-built war junks creaked under the weight of soldiers, provisions, and bundles of arrows. The scent of pitch, salt, and damp wood filled the air.
One hundred thousand men, and 3,500 ships.
Li Shan stood on the deck of his assigned vessel, hand resting on the haft of his long spear. His face was calm, but his eyes were hard, as though carved from stone. Below him, the soldiers of Jiangnan—former Song men now wearing Yuan insignia—huddled in tight groups, their voices low, their faces pale.
Shangguan Ying'er stood next to him, carrying her sword and her medicine pouch. She had been handing out ginger water to seasick soldiers and quietly wrapping bandages for those who had already scraped or bruised themselves in the boarding chaos. The ship pitched gently in the morning tide, but already she felt her stomach tightening. Land was slipping away, and with it the last remnants of familiarity.
From the flagship in the center of the harbor, a great black banner unfurled—"成吉思汗"—its white characters stark as a blade against the gray sky. A blare of horns followed, long and deep, shaking the mist.
The fleet stirred. Hundreds of ships lurched as sails were loosed and oars dipped into water. The first strokes pulled the armada eastward, out of the estuary and into the open sea.
"Ying'er," Li Shan's voice was low, carried only to her. She turned and saw his gaze fixed on the horizon. "From this day, we ride the tide of the steppe, even though we were born to the rivers of the south. Remember this moment."
She nodded, clutching the sheath of her sword. The cries of seagulls wheeled overhead, then faded as the fleet pressed into deeper waters.
For days they sailed, the endless ocean swallowing all sense of time. The sun blazed by day, and the stars at night seemed sharp enough to pierce the sails. Soldiers sickened, retching over the rails. Horses stamped and neighed miserably in their cramped pens, their sweat mixing with the stench of tar and seawater.
Li Shan kept his men in order with quiet firmness, drilling them even on the decks, forcing them to keep their minds sharp. Yet in the dark of night, when the watchfires burned low, he too would stand by the rail, staring into the black waves, wondering whether this path was destiny or doom.
Ying'er joined him often. She would rest her hand on the damp wood beside his, listening to the sea groan against the hull. Once, she whispered, "The water has no end. Do you think Heaven meant men to fight upon it?"
Li Shan did not answer. The wind filled the silence for him, whistling through the rigging like the breath of unseen spirits.
Then, on the seventh night, the sea changed.
A storm began to brew on the horizon—low clouds pressing against the stars, a strange green glow flickering along the waves. Sailors muttered of dragons stirring beneath the depths, of the wrath of forgotten gods. Horns sounded from the flagship, ordering the fleet to tighten formation.
Rain began as a mist, then fell in sheets. Lightning split the sky, illuminating row upon row of dark, heaving ships, all bound eastward into a churning void.
Li Shan braced against the mast, rain soaking through his armor, while Ying'er clung to the rail, her hair whipping in the storm.
The voyage had truly begun.
And somewhere beyond that storm—beyond the empty horizon—their allies, or perhaps their rivals, waited.
Chapter Six - Japan prepared for the 2nd invasion
Even after the Yuan fleet had vanished beyond the horizon in 1274, the scars of war lingered across Kyushu's coastline. The beaches of Hakata, Imatsu, and Matsura were littered with wreckage—splintered masts, shattered armor, and the unclaimed corpses of men from both shores of the sea. Local soldiers and villagers labored side by side, dragging bodies into shallow graves, clearing burnt timbers, and patching the broken gates of seaside castles. The smell of brine mixed with the stench of death, a grim reminder that the Mongols might return at any tide.
Far away in Kamakura, Hōjō Tokimune sat at the heart of the shogunate's storm. Barely in his thirties, he bore the weight of the realm, summoning his stewards and commanders day and night. His orders were clear: the coastline must be remade into a fortress. The Kyushu lords were recalled to their provinces, commanded to reorganize their retinues, to drill their men, and to stand ready for the next invasion. Supplies of arrows, rice, timber, and horses were stockpiled, so that when the Yuan returned—as all believed they would—the defenders of Japan would not be caught unprepared.
Along the beaches, the stone bulwarks of defense began to rise. In Matsura, Hakata, and Imatsu, masons and peasants worked in shifts, laboring through rain and moonlight alike. They hauled rough stone from quarries, setting each block into walls that faced the sea like clenched jaws. Watchtowers rose on headlands, beacons were prepared on high ridges, and timber palisades backed the stone with layers of defense.
At Hakata, the warrior Takezaki Suenaga himself rode out daily to oversee the works. Bamboo staff in hand, he marked positions for traps, arrow platforms, and concealed pits, instructing soldiers to think of the shore not as sand but as battlefield. "Each wall," he told them, "is not just stone—it is a vow to our ancestors." His words carried into the arms of the workers, who stacked timber and hammered nails with the memory of fire and blood fresh in their hearts.
Inside the shogunate, preparations went beyond walls and weapons. Temples and shrines across the realm were enlisted into the defense. Priests led rituals of prayer for rain and wind, offerings to Hachiman, the god of war, and solemn ceremonies honoring fallen ancestors. Bells tolled across valleys, reminding every samurai household of its duty. Orders spread throughout the land: warriors were to keep their armor polished, their bows strung, their horses trained. Archery drills echoed across fields, swords clashed in practice yards, and young men were taught to watch the sea with suspicion.
In this crucible, the identity of the samurai deepened. Families such as the Matsura, the Kōno, and the Shōni found their regional loyalties bound to a greater cause—the defense of the archipelago itself. They learned to read the tides, to use rocky inlets and shifting sandbars as weapons against ships, to strike swiftly from hidden coves. Young men who had once been mere retainers now carried the weight of warriors, scarred by the memory of comrades lost but strengthened with a new resolve.
Meanwhile, Kamakura kept a wary eye across the waters. Spies were dispatched to Goryeo, merchants were quietly questioned, and reports from the continent were gathered and compared. The shogunate had learned bitterly that valor and stone walls alone could not guarantee survival. Knowledge itself became a weapon. Information on Mongol shipbuilding, troop movements, and court politics in Khanbaliq flowed into the council chambers, where Tokimune and his advisors pored over maps by lantern-light.
At these councils, the young regent's voice was steady, his resolve iron. He spoke not of a single wall or battle, but of a system—a defense that wove fortifications, garrisons, supply lines, and tactics into one seamless shield. Weather, terrain, and the spirit of the warriors were weighed as carefully as steel.
And so, while the winds scattered the wreckage of the first invasion, Japan's shores were remade in stone and oath. The people of Kyushu labored not only to rebuild, but to prepare. For all knew: the storm that had passed was only the first.
Chapter Eight - The Stone Walls of Hakata
The summer of 1281 was thick with heat and salt. When the Yuan armada finally sighted Japan, the commanders expected swift triumph. Instead, they saw jagged rocks, narrow coves, and hostile cliffs. There was no welcoming shore.
On the flagship's deck, Li Shan stared toward the coast. Tens of thousands of soldiers stood restless on the ships, the smell of horse dung, sweat, and rotting grain suffocating the air. Ying'er stood beside him, her hand pressed to the rail.
"Where do we land?" she asked.
Li Shan's silence was answer enough.
The fleet dropped anchor, turning Hakata Bay into a floating fortress. For nearly a month, the armada anchored within Hakata Bay, ships swaying in the hot wind. Soldiers and horses grew restless in the holds, their sweat and dung fouling the air. Every few days the drums beat, ordering another assault. Every time the sea and the samurai hurled them back.
One dawn the horns blared and the war drums thundered. Warships surged toward the shallows, soldiers leaping into the surf. Among them strode Li Shan, shield on his back, sword in hand, and Ying'er, tall spear gleaming. The cold tide slapped at their legs as arrows rained from the pine woods above the beach.
"Stay close," Li Shan shouted, deflecting a shaft with his shield. A soldier beside him pitched forward, blood bubbling from his throat.
At the stone wall, defenders burst forth—samurai with naginata, ashigaru with spears. The beach became a furnace of steel and blood. Horses screamed as they slipped on wet sand, crushing men beneath them.
Li Shan cut his way into the fray. A samurai lunged at him with a naginata; he parried with his shield, stepped in close, and drove his blade through the man's armpit. Hot blood sprayed across his face. Another swung at his legs—Li Shan leapt aside, slashing downward, cleaving the helmet from skull.
Beside him, Ying'er moved like a shadow among firelight. She whirled her spear in great arcs, its steel head catching the sun. One thrust punched through a defender's breastplate, pinning him to the wall. With a pivot, she swept low, the spear-butt cracking another man's jaw. Her braid whipped through the air as she fought, face streaked with blood and sweat but eyes unyielding.
The pair fought back to back, their martial skill carving a space amidst the slaughter. Soldiers rallied around them, pressing against the stone barrier. For a moment it seemed the wall might be scaled.
But then the defenders counterattacked. From behind the rampart came a storm of arrows and stones. A captain fell with his skull split; another was dragged screaming into the pine woods beyond the wall, never seen again. The Yuan soldiers faltered, trampled in the surf as the tide rose red.
Night brought worse horrors. Pirates crept from the dark shoreline, torches in hand. Yuan ships caught fire, their horses shrieking as flames consumed them. The bay glowed red with burning pitch; the smell of flesh and pine smoke choked the air.
When the northern and southern fleets finally met in July, a grand assault was ordered. Tens of thousands stormed the beaches again, the waves carrying them like a living tide. Li Shan and Ying'er charged at the head of the vanguard, their weapons gleaming.
At the wall, the clash was apocalyptic. Samurai hurled down firepots, defenders screamed their war cries from behind pine-shaded ramparts. Li Shan smashed an enemy helm with his shield, ripping the sword from his foe's hand and driving it into another. Ying'er vaulted atop a half-shattered ladder, her spear sweeping defenders from the parapet before she leapt back down into the melee.
But the walls held.
Hour after hour, the Yuan dead littered the beaches. The sea rolled their bodies back, bloated faces bumping against the hulls of their own ships. The sand was churned into black sludge by hoof, boot, and blood.
By the sixth week, Li Shan stood ankle-deep in gore at the base of Hakata's stone walls. His arms were heavy, his sword chipped and dull, but his eyes still burned. Ying'er, wounded at the shoulder, leaned on her spear yet refused to retreat.
"The walls will not fall," she gasped.
Li Shan raised his gaze to the storm clouds boiling above the bay. Lightning flashed on the horizon, thunder rolling like the voice of Heaven.
"Then let Heaven itself strike them," he answered grimly.
And the sea wind howled, carrying the mingled stench of pine, salt, and death.
Chapter Nine - Wrath of Heaven
The sea turned black on the first day of the eighth lunar month.
Heavy clouds pressed low over Hakata Bay, sealing the horizon. Then the storm broke.
Winds howled like ten thousand demons. Ships that once filled the sea in proud formation were tossed about like scattered leaves. Masts cracked like bone, sails tore to ribbons, and hulls slammed against each other with the sound of thunder. Wave after wave rose higher than the city walls of Dadu, crashing down upon the fleet.
For four days the typhoon raged without mercy.
Men screamed as they were pitched into the boiling sea. Warhorses neighed in terror, their armored bodies dragged beneath the waves. Weapons and helmets flashed briefly before being swallowed by the abyss. Blood and foam mingled into one. A thousand ships shattered, their wreckage drifting among floating corpses.
Admiral Fan Wenhu's flagship splintered under a towering wave. Fan himself was hurled into the depths, his heavy armor dragging him down like a stone. Just as the sea was about to claim him, one of his lieutenants leapt in, clutching his commander by the collar. The two vanished beneath the surface, swallowed again and again by the storm, before finally re-emerging clinging to broken planks. Half-drowned, Fan gasped for air, but even then croaked out the order:
"Withdraw. We cannot fight Heaven itself. Withdraw at once!"
On Hirado Island, some four thousand soldiers had miraculously survived, but they were stranded. With no ships left, they wept and shouted as Admiral Fan prepared to sail away. To make space for the men he could rescue, Fan ordered seventy-five fine warhorses thrown into the sea, their terrified cries vanishing into the gale. But the abandoned soldiers on Hirado were left behind, cursing Heaven and their commanders as the storm swept over them.
Amid this chaos, Li Shan and Ying'er fought their own battle against the sea.
When the first squall struck, Li Shan gripped the railing of their ship until his hands bled, the rain cutting into his face like blades. Ying'er had tied herself to the mast with a rope, but when the vessel capsized, both were cast into the churning ocean with hundreds of others.
"Ying'er!" Li Shan roared, though the storm swallowed his voice.
She vanished beneath the waves, reappearing only to sink again. Li Shan seized her arm and refused to let go, though each wave hammered them like hammers on an anvil. Clutching driftwood, they were finally carried onto the sands near Mount Goryu. Exhausted and bleeding, the two staggered to shore, only to find themselves surrounded by thousands of ragged survivors—an army broken and leaderless.
It was there that the Japanese counterattack began.
From the pine-covered hills, war horns and drums shook the air. Arrows darkened the sky. Warriors and local militias surged down from stone-walled fortifications, their armor gleaming in the stormlight. The Mongol-Yuan troops, trapped between sea and forest, were driven step by step toward a narrow headland called Hakkaku-jima—the Isle of Eight Corners.
The slaughter was relentless.
On the beach, the sand turned black with blood. Arrows pinned men to the ground like insects. Horses reared and collapsed, their entrails spilling into the tide. The clash of steel rang ceaselessly: spears snapping, blades biting into flesh, men crying out in agony before falling silent. The sea itself turned red as waves washed over heaps of corpses.
Amid the chaos, Li Shan fought like a man possessed. With a blood-soaked saber, he cut a path through the enemy, striking down armored samurai and ashigaru alike. At his side, Ying'er, though struck by an arrow in her shoulder, whirled her long sword with deadly grace, skewering opponents one after another. The two stood back-to-back, their bodies battered, their armor cracked, yet their martial skill shone even in this doomed battlefield.
"Shan, we will not leave this place alive!" Ying'er shouted, her voice ragged with pain, blood soaking her sleeve.
"Then we die killing them!" Li Shan bellowed, cleaving through another warrior who rushed them.
For hours the slaughter raged. Corpses piled high upon the sand; broken shields and shattered blades littered the beach. By dusk, more than a hundred thousand Yuan soldiers had been trapped, cut down, or captured. The survivors, numbering in the tens of thousands, were bound and dragged away in chains.
As the sun set, the battlefield of Hakkaku-jima became a vast graveyard. The waves lapped against the bodies of men and horses alike, carrying the wreckage of the once-mighty Yuan fleet out to sea. Smoke drifted across the shore, lit red by burning wreckage. Under its cover, Li Shan and Ying'er, bloodied but unbroken, stumbled down to a hidden cove. There, half-buried in seaweed and broken timbers, lay a battered fishing boat.
A handful of Korean soldiers, faces pale with exhaustion, were already there. One recognized Li Shan and called out hoarsely: "Quickly—before they find us!"
Without a word, Li Shan lifted Ying'er aboard. She collapsed on the planks, still gripping her broken sword. He pushed the boat into the tide with the last of his strength, then climbed in, helping the Koreans raise the patched sail.
The little craft lurched into the dark waves. Behind them, the beach was still alive with fire and steel; the cries of the dying carried across the water like ghosts. But ahead stretched only the open sea, black and endless.
Ying'er, half-conscious, whispered, "Will we… reach home?"
Li Shan tightened his blood-soaked cloak around her shoulders, staring eastward where faint stars broke through the storm clouds. His voice was low, steady: "If Heaven still has mercy… we will see Goryeo's shores again."
The wind caught the sail, and the small boat drifted into the night, vanishing among the waves—one fragile spark of survival in the ruins of the greatest armada the Yuan had ever sent.
Chapter Ten - The Return
The Yuan fleet's second invasion of Japan in 1281 had ended in catastrophe. Tens of thousands had sailed from China and Korea, yet fewer than one-tenth had survived. Most ships were destroyed in typhoons or stranded by the unyielding Japanese defenses; countless soldiers had fallen, their bodies swept into the surf or strewn along the beaches. When Kublai Khan learned of the failure, he was furious. Fan Wenhu, who was stripped of command. But even this disaster did not diminish the Great Khan's desire to subjugate Japan. In 1283, he ordered the rebuilding of the invasion fleet and the collection of supplies for a third campaign. Local resistance in southern China, coupled with Mongol setbacks in Vietnam, forced a delay, and the third invasion never came. By Kublai's death in 1294, Japan had been spared further Mongol conquest.
Li Shan and Ying'er returned to southern China, exhausted but alive. The land was scarred by decades of war, yet along the riverbanks, fertile soil promised renewal. Together they cleared a small plot, plowed the earth, and planted rice. Each seedling that sprouted became a quiet triumph over death, a testament to their survival and resilience.
They built a modest home of timber and clay, its roof thatched with reeds. Smoke curled from the kitchen, birds sang in the nearby woods, and the river whispered its constant song. Life, once overshadowed by thunderous waves and blood-soaked sand, returned to quiet rhythm.
Children came to fill their home: first a boy, spirited and curious, then a daughter, gentle and clever. Li Shan taught them the ways of the land and the discipline of martial arts—not to prepare them for war, but to cultivate courage, strength, and mindfulness. Ying'er nurtured them with patience and warmth, teaching the language of care and endurance.
Yet the memories of the past were never far. Often, at dawn or dusk, Li Shan and Ying'er would walk to the Yangtze River's edge. They watched the tides and gazed eastward towards sea, toward the distant islands where once they had fought and bled. The horizon was serene, but their hearts carried the shadows of comrades lost, of soldiers buried in foreign sands, and of battles that had tested the limits of human endurance.
The river flowed, swelling and receding with the seasons. The rice paddies stretched vibrantly, their green swaying like gentle waves under the sun. Their children grew alongside the crops, laughters echoing over the riverbanks, untouched by the war memories their parents had faced. Li Shan and Ying'er held each other's hands, their fingers entwined as they watched the sun sink over the southern hills, a quiet testament to life's resilience.
And when the east wind blew, carrying the faint salt of distant seas, they would look across the waters and remember the strength they had found in each other, in survival, and in the simple miracle of returning home. Here, on this land reclaimed from war and chaos, they had built a life, a family, and a sanctuary.
The past would never fully vanish, yet along the riverbanks of southern China, life had returned to its quiet rhythm. Love remained steadfast. Courage endured. Their children ran and laughed beneath the reeds and pine trees, the sunlight casting ripples across the emerald rice paddies. Li Shan and Ying'er felt that some things—across oceans, across generations—remained eternal.
And when night fell, as the lanterns flickered in the gentle breeze, Ying'er dreamed of the battles they had fought together on the foreign shores, of Li Shan at her side, of comrades falling in the tide of war, and of war horses neighing across distant shores.